I chose the KDE 32 bit desktop version. The machine I chose to install PCLinuxOS on is the Samsung R20. (The same machine that I had previously installed openSUSE and Debian).

I installed the live KDE version to a USB drive using UNetbootin and rebooted the computer.

The PCLinuxOS installer (Drak) is one of the best I’ve used. From start to finish the install took about 10 minutes.

The first part of the installer deals with partitioning your drive. You can choose to use the entire disk, use existing partitions or choose a custom partition setup..

Depending on which partitioning option you chose a few extra screens appear asking about the partition setup and then the installer creates the partitions and then starts copying the files.

When the files have finished copying you are then asked to choose the boot loader.

That is it. You are then asked to reboot the machine and you are ready to go.

Well actually not quite. When you reboot you are then asked the rest of the necessary questions such as keyboard layout, timezone and user details.

A nice touch though is that when I first boot into PCLinuxOS it has remembered my wireless connection from when I entered it into the live session saving me from having to enter the password again.

When you first log in you are shown a message stating that your system needs to be updated.

I followed the instructions and 128mb of updates were installed which is not unreasonable.

First Impressions

When you first log in to PCLinuxOS you are presented with a screen that to Windows users may seem quite familiar.

There is a taskbar at the bottom and just a couple of icons on the desktop.

The taskbar contains a menu icon, a series of quick launch icons and in the bottom right a system tray with system icons and a clock.

From left to right you have the icons which brings up the menu, show the desktop, configure your desktop, configure your computer, a file manager and virtual desktops. (You may notice in the screen above that there is a FireFox icon as well but that is because FireFox happened to be running at the time the image was taken).

In the system tray the icons are for network settings, klipper (a clipboard tool), sound, (then there is a little arrow which when expanded gives options for) desktop notifier, kwallet, korganiser and notifications. Finally of course there is the clock.

The two desktop icons are to show the home folder and the trash icon to show the recycled files.

If you click the PC button (which for a Windows user is where the Windows start button is) then a menu appears.

I find this menu to be a bit underwhelming and chaotic. There are simply too many categories and no search feature.

KDE has a better menu system than this and you can turn it on by right clicking the PC icon. Now select the switch to “Application Launcher Style”.

The application launcher style menu is much nicer for navigating and it has the search feature.

Simply type a keyword or a program name and the chosen item is likely to appear.

The layout of this menu is much nicer as well.

You have the favourites tab which should contain the applications you use most and is fully customisable.

There is the applications tab which provides a list of categories and then applications within the category.

The computer tab provides access to important folders.

The recently used tab shows your most recently accessed applications, files and folders and last but not least the leave button gives you options for closing down the computer.

Customising the desktop

If you are a Windows user looking to move to Linux then you should consider that PCLinuxOS as a real step up.

Not only does it perform better than Windows it is fully customisable as well. Sure at first the desktop looks exactly the same but I am sure that is just to make everyone feel at home. We have grown up all our lives with Windows so showing people a Windows style desktop isn’t a bad way to go.

Customising the desktop is made easy in PCLinuxOS. To be honest everything is made easy in PCLinuxOS.

Lets start with changing the most basic thing, the desktop background.

Right click anywhere on the desktop and click the item that says “Folder View Settings”. Now that name may not sound as nice as “Change desktop background” but there is a reason for the menu item name that I will come to later.

PCLinuxOS comes with a nice selection of default stock wallpapers but you can add your own by clicking “open” and then navigating to the path to an image file you saved onto the computer. When you have chosen the image you wish to use click “Apply”.

As you can see you can brighten PCLinuxOS up with a few simple clicks.Other things you can change in the folder view settings are the mouse actions and also if you choose the location option you can choose the icons that appear on the desktop.

Now for your main desktop you might wish to leave it as is or you may wish to add a few widgets.

You can add widgets by right clicking on the desktop. Now select “Add Widgets”. There are a whole host of widgets available.

One of the best widgets is the shelf. (Doesn’t sound very exciting does it). Adding a shelf enables you to group all your folder icons into one place. It makes it possible to group your icons and move them around your desktop en block.

Now my example above isn’t the greatest but I have chosen to add the places icons into the shelf. You can put anything in there. You can add pictures, movies, music etc.

Now everything you have seen thus far you can actually do in Windows (even Vista had these options). Windows however doesn’t have the option of multiple desktops. The last icon in the quick launch bar gives you the option to switch desktops.

Each desktop can have a different desktop background and different widgets on it.As well as that each desktop can have a different activity. Remember earlier when I mentioned “Folder View Settings”. Well if you click in the top right hand corner then a new menu appears and one of the menu options is “Activities”.

Each activity can give you a different way of viewing things. For example as well as the folder view there is the search view or the grouping view or the newspaper view.

The systems settings screen that loads lets you configure other things as well such as network settings, bluetooth, printer configurations, the login screen and many other settings.

If you want to configure more serious options such as adding users to your system, setting up a firewall, creating an FTP server etc then you can click the “configure your computer” icon on the quick launch bar which is a little spanner icon in a circle. To run this feature you need to be able to enter the root (administrator) password you created when you first installed PCLinuxOS.

Connecting to the internet

If you setup the internet whilst running the live session of PCLinuxOS then the connection will be remembered when you install the system which means you are automatically connected.

Obviously you may move around and so the wireless connection will be different from place to place. To change the wireless connection click the network icon in the system tray.

The network card on my PC was picked up straight away in the live session and carried across to the installed version.Clicking the network icon brings up a screen similar to the one displayed and as you can see I have two networks available to me.

If I click the other network than the one I am connected to it asks for my security key and after entering the key KWallet appears asking whether I want to use it to keep my passwords safe.

Flash and MP3

PCLinuxOS is impressive on most fronts and I wasn’t at all surprised to find out that Flash and MP3s were able to play straight away.

What is also impressive is that the default music player is Clementine which is a top music application.

Applications

Bearing in mind that I used the live disk to install PCLinuxOS there is an impressive amount of applications installed by default.

The following table provides a list of some of the applications installed.

Summary

PCLinuxOS is a really good distribution especially for newcomers to Linux. If you are really fed up with Windows and have been scared off by the talk of having to enter commands into a terminal window then PCLinuxOS maybe your answer.

PCLinuxOS is one of the few distributions where the terminal application isn’t immediately available and to be honest for most users it is unlikely you will ever need it.

This really is a distribution for everyday computer users who surf the web, create documents, do a bit of microblogging or online interaction via Facebook etc. It is a great alternative to Windows and a throughly professional looking operating system.

Any complaints? Not really. I’m not a fan of the classic menu that is installed by default but that was easily swapped out and I did have a KDE crash message appear although it never had any effect on the running system.

I would probably recommend that if you are going to try this out and you want the full experience that you should skip the live distribution and go straight for the full monty option.

I have been running PCLinuxOS on original 7" Asus EeePCs from 2008 until right now. I have also been installing it with the Enlightenment desktop for the past few years, as that particular desktop environment affords me the greatest possible amount of app viewing area on their tiny 800×480 screens – and, it is _fast_. On a 900MHz Celeron-based machine its performance is truly impressive! Firefox – with 200 tabs opened? Not a problem. Full-screen Flash video? Smooth. DVDs? Burn 'em and play 'em, with ease. Plus, a full choice of both KDE and Gnome apps in _one_ non-confusing repository that can happily co-exist with each other in the same system can certainly come in handy too. All-in-all, it works well enough overall – I'd say give it a decent look, at least.

I got away from PCLinux because it seemed like they kept mucking up the repositories, or package management every 6-12 months. At least once, an update broke my installation because I didn't know they made a major change. My preferred distros are SolusOS and Sparkylinux, which are both Debian based. SolusOS is aimed a bit more at being user-friendly, but Sparky is pretty nice as well.The problem with trying to make linux seem like windows is you set up some faults expectations. Linux is not windows. Period. You have to be careful when trying to move someone to linux, and make sure they understand that, otherwise they will be complaining later that MSOffice or some other windows program that they used all the time before won't install, and that linux sucks. You don't want that.

I switched to PCLOS about 7 years ago because an update for Mandriva (which I was running until then) borked my system. At the time, PCLOS was still in beta (I started with the 0.92 release). I still run PCLOS because after a long day of dealing with command-line-only *nix servers, I want a system that "just works".

One thing to note: PCLOS is a rolling release OS. Users should check for and install any and all updates at least once a month. (I usually check once a week, but I have gone as much as 6 weeks ata crack, with no serious issues.) As a side effect of this, users don't need to reinstall every 6 months or yearly. I last installed the 2010 release, yet my system is totally up to date, and reports as being the 2013.2 release.

Oh, and one point from the article: with PCLOS, pick ONE, repeat, ONE, repository. All repositories are simply mirrors of the primary, but at any given time might be in different stages of being updated. So trying to use multiple repos can confuse synaptic and mess up your system. (There are some special, extra repos that can be enabled. See the forums for details.)

PCLOS was my first love, it is a tremendous distro for windows users looking to make the switch to linux, ive installled KDE MiniMe version on a few family members netbooks, (this was almost 2 years ago) and their instals still goin strong, even without updating in all that time. ++

Yes, because the community likes it that way. No politics. No belittling other users. It's a friendly place for friendly people. And, unlike many other distros that have more users, its forum is alive and full of traffic. Lots to discuss in there. Some distros have forums that are ghost towns. Not PCLinuxOS.

I've been a user since Red Hat 5.2,and found PCLinuxOS about 2006 with release .92. I've never left. I've come and gone from distros like Debian, Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Suse, Mandrake, Red Hat… I still load all sorts of distros on another partition like openSUSE, Korora, Fedora, Linux Mint, Mageia… However, I keep PCLinuxOS as my main distro. Unlike many distros, I don't fight with permissions problems with files to get Amarok to see my music volume and setup the library, it has simple root service menus to enable you to do whatever you need to get done, and everything is mostly setup from the word go. A little tweaking and I'm off and running as a USER and not having to type "sudo blah blah blah" in a terminal to do something. I'm so tired of reading about how easy peasy Ubuntu is, but to me it just restricts the user during the installation process to try and push itself as the dominant distro on your drive, and the commandline BS is just unnecessary, to me. PCLinuxOS takes all that away and lets me, mostly, just do what I want instead of tinker. Is it perfect? No… It's true that I get something breaking on a rare occasion. They're a very small development team, and things are just bonkers when they're working on a big release like PCLinuxOS 64 bit. But, that's the price you pay. However, at every turn, some serious though has went into this distro that simply makes sense. Little bits here and there are just well though out and simple. I pull my hair out on other distros to accomplish the same tasks. You'll never convince me to use another distro. It's that good.

BTW, Arch also breaks the rolling release now and then. I think it's partially the nature of the beast.

PCLinuxOS is a great distro made greater by their rolling update system. But (big but) it can't be installed alongside Windows on any very recent system. PCLOS does not support EFI booting (with or without 'secure boot' encryption) or GPT partitioning. Good luck buying a new system these days that isn't set up that way. So PCLOS is a great way to breathe new life into that old XP machine that's on its last legs, but if you want to dual boot on a new machine, you're gonna have to look elsewhere. As of today, I think only Ubuntu, Fedora and SUSE support that. I'm currently running Linux Mint KDE – which works, but which was very tricky to get to dual boot on my EFI-based Windows 7 box. But that's better than PCLOS which trashed my Mint partition when I tried to install it alongside Mint.

I loved PClinuxOS because it did everything I needed out of the box… That being said, when wanting to add myself to the on-line community, it was a nightmare. First of all being from Texas, I could not use any derivative of the word Tex in my name. So I had to differ my Internet presence with another name. Once there it was hard to get anyone to help me thru the steps to customize my browser and or desktop.

After much frustration, I switched to Linux Mint and never looked back.

There may not be "an easier way to transition to Windows" than with PCLinuxOS, but Mageia 2.0 KDE desktop is just as easy and quite painless.

I have been implementing PCLinuxOS, both standard and the "Full Monty" on clients and friends Windows-rotted computers with great success and user satisfaction for about a year, and very recent experiencing the same triumph of users with Mageia. I look forward to Mageia 3 if just as or more smooth and pleasant to experience.

Mageia I found very painful compared to PCLinuxOS, it's essentially nothing more than plain Mandriva in my eyes, with all the woes that implies. I've been distro hopping for over a decade but PCLinuxOS I always came back to in the end. I finally stopped trying to find something better, because there isn't one. Linux Mint Debian Edition comes close, but only if you know what you're doing

PCLOS was my first distro. It all just worked, and worked better than Windows 2000 for anything to do with the Internet. The PCLOS forums, especially the Software Announcements forum, are a very important news source. I like to make sure I check it before installing updates, just in case. My guess is that failing to do so is the reason my first install eventually stopped updating. I started using Mint and Ubuntu distros later on for easy access to captive codecs and drivers, and the development build of Wine in order to play World of Warcraft.

Right now, PCLOS is one of three distros I consistently use (the others being Stella 6.4 and Madbox 12.04, a minimal Ubuntu spin). If I were to install Linux for a Windows user, I'd probably prefer to do PCLOS; if I were to recommend a distro to self-install, it would more likely be Mint 13 KDE, because I think the partition assignment interface in Ubiquity is better than that in Drak. I plan to install Mageia 3 KDE once it's released, to see how it compares.

When I made the switch to Linux, it was back in the days Freespire was around. I found it extremely easy to use and the community forums were helpful when questions arose. Since the demise of that, I spent a lot of time trying out various distros and ultimately chose Kubuntu. I would recommend Kubuntu to any newbie since it is so easy to use and that there is a wealth of information online.

As a PClinuxOS user: Thank you for a good review.I just want to add that once you install, update, install all the programs you need and the look you like, you can use mylivecd to make a remaster of your install (an ISO) and save it just in case something bad happens or put it in a pendrive using PCLinuxOS Live USB Creator and take it with you, wherever there is a computer you have your own desktop. I've been doing that for years and saved me a couple of times, also, I made a remaster with edu software and I have installed it in several schools; very useful apps.

I made a try with PCLinux 2 years ago and it was a disaster. SUSE has worked better and Mandriva too.

But the most easiest way for newbies is surely Linux Mint. It works, it just works. It's easy to install, easy to use, stable, secure and ready for use just after you have installed it. I recommend Mint.

I installed PClinuxOS on my Netbook an HP MINI 1110NR. Windows would not work on it at all (so slow it seemed frozen) and I tried several other linux OSes and they were unsatisfactory. PClinuxOS workes beautifully. It installed and the WIFI connected immediately, something the other linux OSes would not do!!

Yes IMO, PCLinuxOS is most 'realistic' Distro, best beginner user which new adapted from windows. But hey, its not close for intermediate & advance Linux user. As far as i instal several Linux distros, only PCLinuxOS which allow zero password for both root and users, so it wont prompt you a password anytime you do an administrative activity on tour machine, and this is important to me, i don't like password prompt, especially when it became on my own machine. Well if someone know any disto which allow non-password for either root or user, out of the box (w/o any tweaking) other than PCLinuxOS, please tell me…

I switched to PClinuxOS in 2009. Before and later I tried many linux distros, but no one was so comfortable in use as this. Everything is configured well after installation. What is always annoying in others linux distributions is that, many configuration settings have to be done, and many packages user must download. Most of them are so obvious, that it is surprising they don't exist since the beginning.I tried recently Fedora, after one day it has landed in closet, because I realized that I will spend two or three days on making it suitable for my needs. Operating system should be friendly for users, ready to work, it should not be created for "linux masochists". PClinuxOS is may best fiend. By the way, it works fine on live, you can take it everywhere on pendrive.

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PCLOS is the only distro I have been able to load onto my laptop which works and well, – my only drip is I sometimes find it difficult to know how to download a new program – in the Packag manager it does not say what else you need. but pushing 70 it's probably me!

Wow! Nice information. There is wonderful on "Is there an easier transition to Linux from Windows than PCLinuxOS?". I am intimidated by the value of in progression on this website. There are a lot of excellent assets here. Definitely I will visit this place again soon. I think, All the routines assume that Windows is fully updated and the problem is still occurring.Here is some helpful information about hardware troubleshooting.

Just a small, and friendly, note, you really should mention how long PCLinuxOS offers updates to a given version of their software.

Why, you may ask ? Because we're talking about WindowsXP users. People who were un-brave enough to stick to windows XP during more than ten years, rather than dare change their operating system to something more recent.

That doesn't make them sucky persons. That makes them persons attacked to stability over glitter.And for people like that, having to update the OS every 9 or 12 months is a straight no-go, they'd need at least an 3 year support duration…

Some Linux distros suit that need, but only a few. And, to be frank, I couldn't find if that was the case for PCLinuxOS (yet, google led me here, thanks for the helpful page nonetheless, as I'm preparing my aunt's move to "the open source" as she says, I'm adding PCLinuxOS to the potential candidates so far).

PCLinuxOS offers continuous updates since it is a "rolling release". that's what that means….so there is no end to support. This is the perfect operating system for the masses of people that will be moving from XP as the support for XP ends in April 2014. This version of linux is an ongoing version so the LTS (Long Term Support) issue of other distros is not an issue and doesn't apply. I too have many people that I support and have kept on Windows XP because it was efficient and just worked (for windows anyway). I will be moving them to PCLinuxOS for sure and their old hardware will be blazing fast again!!!

I just installed PCLinuxOS last week after using Ubuntu for awhile, but got tired of the lousy unity GUI, PCLinux is easier to use as I'm switching from XP. However I had many issues with installing this to my computer as this machine had a Raid Array and PCLinux would not install as it did not recognize this. I had to remove the Raid array for it to install.

I have used it since I believe 92a. Anyway off and on it failed me but always worked in the end.I have always used the mini version since it came out. Of all the distributions I have basically narrowed it down to two. PcLinux mini and Saybayon Minimal.

Thanks for this review of PCLinuxOS. I've been using Ubuntu LTS for about a half a year now but am very unhappy with the number of updates that are being constantly created (at least 2x per week if I remember correctly) but more than that, the fact that these 'updates' on the 'stable' release have been extremely disruptive because my NIC uses Marvell Technology Group Ltd. 88E8056 PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet Controller which is not properly supported and at least four times in the past few months accepting updates has blown away the proprietary driver that I installed to fix the problems. Ridiculously, this controller has been an issue for Ubuntu (and possibly other distros) for at least 6 years judging from the forum's search results. Tired of this so started looking for recommendations for a replacement and landed on this blog post.

I'll be giving PCLinuxOS a try shortly in part because of the tidbit that most pleased me when I read it here, namely that PCLinuxOS runs nicely on HP minis of which I have one that is grindingly slow with the OEM's XP on it. Oh, and the existence of an active forum as well as a magazine? SOLD!

Presuming I am happy with the OS on my desktop, I'll next be searching for hints on how to get my mini to allow me into the BIOS so I can boot from a thumbdrive LOL. Dilbert was right. Technology is no place for wimps!

I recently played around with the KDE Monty, KDE miniME, and LXDE versions of PCLinuxOS in VirtualBox. I was, and am, very impressed with the distro. I am mainly a CrunchBang and Siduction user, both Debian based distros. Under Debian, the largest collection of up-to-date software is only available in the unstable repos. Linux veterans know that running unstable Debian can sometimes lead to breakage.

PCLinuxOS is refreshing because it's a rolling release that appears not to also be accompanied by breakage commonly associated with running a rolling release. PCLinuxOS is currently my recommended Linux distro for Windows users looking to try out Linux.

I have made the switch recently from Windows Vista to PCLinuxOS for various reasons. Since I am a noobe I made a list of Linux Distros that I wanted to try and PCLinuxOS came out to be the easiest one to install and use… up until now. Two days after install, the Synaptic db got corrupted. I went on their forum and managed to fix it. However Synaptic will systematically crash if I try to update a package. I have found no solution for this but a suggestion to reinstall the OS. Not only this does not inspire confidence, but I am not even sure out to go about it. I am thinking trying out the Ubuntu family of Distros and if that doesn't work then Windows here I am again.

In having used PCLinuxOS since waaaay back in the day (Version 0.9, I think it was 2005), I have had Synaptic database issues exactly twice. One resolved itself when I told it to "fix broken packages" and the other I just reinstalled for. It only takes 20 or 30 minutes to install, update and set up everything.

If you think Ubuntu or Windows are better choices, then you're a masochist for sure.

I am relatively new to Linux coming from many years of using Windblows and I have been distro hopping for OS's for the past several months comparing, testing and looking for the one to stick with and use for every day computing. I have tried about a hundred of the so called best ones and for me PCLinuxOS KDE Full Monty 2014.04 version is simply the best over all OS I have seen and used yet for every day computing. It looks fantastic, is easy to use and just simply works great as it should. Been using and playing with it every day for 2 weeks now without a single problem or hiccup. The hardware and software support in it is fantastic (javascript and flash are updated and already working in the web browsers) and it already comes with most every app you will ever need out of the box too. They also have over 12,000 rpm software packages available from their software repository. There is really nothing at all to change in it or add to it but it is easy to add apps and customize to your liking if you want to. Also it is a rolling release which is great. All in all it simply is the best, most well done and implemented OS to run along side of or to replace Windblows. My choice for web development and running a local server is Linux Mint with XAMPP though and for and to give new life to older computers with low resources it is Puppy Linux all the way which has such a small footprint for everything that is packed into it and it is so fast it is scary.

This is kind of fun! I'm not techie at all, but somehow have 5 computers. 2 Dells with XP, a Sony vaio with Vista, a macbook, and a Windows RT. It was hard to justify paying $200+ to upgrade the XPs worth maybe $50. So, put Zorin 6 premium on the oldest…its satisfactory. Put Mint on the D430 laptop. However, Mint can't find activate my broadcom wireless. The forums indicate that is a major problem. So, you said above that this OS can just pick it up and work? I dual booted. XP works fine, but I need to get rid of it. Got 3 gigs ram and Core 2 Duo. Thanks, I appreciate this blog!

Some steps are missing but I gathered I needed Unetbootin to install the downloaded XXX.iso image on the USB drive (did that), and then reboot using the USB drive as the boot device (did that). It appeared to start up PCLinuxOS on the USB drive, but there was no option to start DRAK (where is it?) partition the laptop's drive. At one point it went to the Linux command line. What am I missing?